Downgrade at NAMB: Part I

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We are gonna talk about a video that was released at the end of last week.

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It's an important one if you're a Southern Baptist, even if you're just an evangelical, because the woke stuff, quote unquote, is not just affecting academic institutions like seminaries, it's affecting church planning, it's affecting missions organizations.

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I've gotten the emails, the messages from people reaching out to me who work in these places, and NAM is no exception.

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I've had people reach out to me, I've had screenshots sent to me concerning information coming out of NAM, but hardly anyone, really no one, it seems like, wants to actually come forward and talk about the corruption and the social justice stuff that's going on.

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And we have an exception. That exception, at least for the social justice stuff, is an individual in the state of Washington who went through the approval process from NAM, the

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North American Mission Board for the Southern Baptist Convention, to become a church planter with them. And I think what makes it possible is, this person is not, as far as I know, drawing an income from NAM right now, so they're not relying on NAM, and most of those who come out and try to talk about what's going on in private but can't go public are doing so probably because they are relying on NAM for their support, and they'll get blacklisted pretty much from any

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SBC entity if they come out against one of them. So this is unique, this is a little glimpse inside what's going on in church planning and church planning training, and I wanna go through it.

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And we're gonna go through, we'll probably do two episodes. This will be the first one, because I think it's like a 40 -minute video, and we'll just play it in its entirety.

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I'll comment on it where I feel like I need to comment, but we're gonna go through it.

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Now, I want to, before we go through it, just talk about a few things, that a few screenshots here

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I thought were interesting. First one from Baptist Press. They lied about the

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Russell Moore departure, in a way. I don't know how else you can say it. I mean, they said something that just was not true, and they knew it wasn't true.

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Baptist Press, or they should have known it was not true. BaptistPress .com, does

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George Soros fund the, someone just sent me this. So if you're gonna look up, hey, does George Soros fund the

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Evangelical Immigration Table, or the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission? No, that's the answer, no.

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Some accusing the Evangelical Immigration Table, or member groups of Evangelical Immigration Table as being

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Soros -funded, point out that Evangelical Immigration Table is supported by the National Immigration Forum, and that an organization chaired by George Soros had been awarded money to the

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National Immigration Forum, which is true. However, the grant in question represented just 2 % of National Immigration Forum's overall budget.

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And further, the Evangelical Immigration Table has never received or utilized any money from either

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George Soros or Soros funding. I just, I thought it was interesting, because this might be old news to some of you, but so much of this has come out.

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I mean, we literally, there are documents now. You can go on, I think Capstone Report published them. I've held them in my hand, though. Documents where the

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Open Societies Foundation is bragging about Russell Moore. And it's just like, but here's the

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Baptist Press saying, no, no, that's not true. Well, here's the Evangelical Immigration Table's website.

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And they list, and this is before Russell Moore, as now he's left the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, but he is listed as, of course, one of the leaders of the organization.

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And you go to baptistnews .com, it says that there's a previously debunked conspiracy theory likely originating out of the

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QAnon movement that claimed that the ERLC was part of an immigrant advocacy group funded by Soros, a favorite boogeyman of the far right and conspiracy theorist.

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Baptist Press explained a year earlier why this isn't true, and yet it ended up as the second bullet point of the study group's list.

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All right, I just want to, some of this stuff is old stuff, but someone sent this to me recently. And I know this is gonna be a question going into the convention about Soros money and the

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ERLC. It's documented, guys. It's documented that money did go to the

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Evangelical Immigration Table that came from George Soros. It doesn't mean the whole budget was from George Soros, but there is a

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Soros connection there. And when they're bragging about, when Open Societies is bragging about Russell Moore in their own documents, this is just beyond the pale.

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But here's the thing. Baptist Press and Baptist News Global have tried to cover this up, kind of.

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They've tried to, I mean, I don't know how else you put it. There's a line going on here. The best construction you can put on it is, yeah, you know, there is a

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Soros connection here, but it's just, it's not, Soros doesn't fund all of it, as if anyone said that, no one said that.

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But you have to at least admit there's a connection there, at least be honest. I mean,

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Baptist Press says at least it's true that the National Immigration Forum has Soros connections.

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So at least they gave, they let you know that. But to claim it's from the QAnon movement, it's just trying to vilify.

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It's trying to do anything to disparage those who would bring this concern up. It's a legitimate concern, and it probably should be brought up at the convention if there's a place to do it.

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So I just wanted to kind of reiterate that to you all, that this is, they're diametrically opposed view here.

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Either Soros was connected financially or he wasn't, and the fact is he was. Randy Adams and Mike Stone are against critical race theory.

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I wanted to announce that as well. Mike Stone last week put out, in an effort to provide leadership with clarity, compassion, and conviction,

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I will submit this resolution to the 2021 Resolutions Committee. Over 50 of us have already agreed to jointly submit this resolution.

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If you are SBC, you can join us. It's, I've gone through it. It's pretty good for the most part.

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The only thing I would say is it does kind of try to use, and maybe it's a strategic thing, the statement that some of the seminary heads like Danny Akin and Al Mohler put out there at the end of last year, where they're saying, hey, we're from the

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Baptist faith and message. We're against critical race theory. And then the same people, Danny Akin especially, then is, well, you know, we teach the good parts, you know, the good things that can come from it in the

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Baptist 21 podcast. So it's using that, I don't know why they decided to use that in their statement as one of the kind of reasons that they want to stand against critical race theory, because that's not an example of it.

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But overall, it's a good statement. And it may just be a strategy thing. The people who put this together, they want to try to spread, get as big of a tent as possible to stand against critical race theory.

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But it does give some legitimacy to Danny Akin and Al Mohler, et cetera. But anyway, that is encouraging, refreshing that Mike Stone wants to combat this stuff.

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And then you have Randy Adams as well signed the Dallas statement against critical race theory.

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I believe Randy Adams is the only one running of the four candidates for president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention who has signed the Dallas statement. So putting that out there.

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Now let's get to the subject at hand for you. Folks who are watching, especially you

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Southern Baptists, let's talk about this video. In Philippians, Paul starts off by talking about how some people are preaching the gospel out of envy that they're seeking to afflict him.

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He then says that he praises God that the gospel is being preached.

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He praises God because his gospel can still reach people. We often look at this and take this to mean that wherever someone is still teaching the gospel, wherever someone still has the truth, even if it's buried in there, that's acceptable, that it's good, that it's okay because we can praise

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God that at least the gospel is being preached. But then later in this book,

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Paul condemns those same people as dogs, as evildoers, as those who mutilate the flesh.

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He doesn't praise them for the fact that the gospel's still there. He praises

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God that God can still use what they have manipulated, corrupted, what they've done at a false motivation.

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Notice the comparison being drawn here that he's starting off this video by saying that there are those who preach the gospel from ill motives.

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Paul praises God the gospel goes forward, but look, these people are bad. They're false teachers.

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And so he's, why would he bring this up? I think he's comparing it to folks in NAM, folks over him that he's about to talk about.

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Save people, but he condemns their teaching.

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The gospel is not something that we can play games with. And that's why

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I have to be honest about a few things. I have to be honest about some of the experiences that I've had to share what

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I've experienced as I've gone through the process of church planting in the SBC. And I'll freely talk with anyone and I'll provide you the information because I want this to be understood.

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I want the gospel to never be muddled or confused or hidden.

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I want us to be everything that the SBC should. The largest force for missions in the entire world.

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We should be turning this country upside down with the gospel, turning this world upside down with the gospel, saving people's souls.

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There's a lot of distractions from that right now. And for anyone who wants to know who

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I am, my name is Kyle Witt, K -Y -L -E -W -H -I -T -T.

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I am open, I will talk to you. My email is just my name, kylewitt at live .com.

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I'm not gonna hide, I'm not going to leave anything up to question because these are conversations that we need to have because I love this church.

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I love Christ and I love you. And this is all so that we can grow.

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Title is Downgrade at the North American Mission Board. This is a great way, for those taking notes, if you need to tell the truth about what's going on in your neck of the woods and you're in the

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SBC, I mean, time is running short, you better do it. This is a great way to do it.

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I mean, starting off, this is my motivation. It's very sincere, doesn't have an ax to grind with anyone.

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He cares about the gospel. He thinks it's being corrupted in some way or there's some false teaching going on.

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It's just a great ways transparent, here's my name. I'm not hiding behind anything.

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I mean, this is a brave individual who is to be commended. I mean, it's impressive to see someone do this.

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So what am I talking about? Why am I here? A little bit about me.

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I've been going through the process of church planting in the Southern Baptist Convention.

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I'm up here in Washington State. And up until very recently,

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Washington State, the Northwest Baptist Convention had their own church planting arm that worked in conjunction with the

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North America Commissions Board. Over my church planting journey that has changed and now the

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North America Commissions Board has taken over operations. We were the last state to be divided like that.

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So for the past two years, I've been going through all the application processes, all the assessments, working with both the

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North America Commissions Board, missionary for this region, as well as the

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Northwest Baptist church planting staff. I don't originate from inside the

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SBC. I've been in Baptist churches all my life, but not specifically

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Southern Baptist churches, a large reason because there aren't a whole lot up here in the

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Northwest. And the nearest one to where I grew up was about a half hour away. At the time, we wouldn't even have known it was

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Southern Baptist. That's just not how people identified up here. But I chose specifically when

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I entered church planting to go with the North America Commissions Board because I looked at the efficiency.

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You can't beat the SBC's efficiency with getting missionaries out there, with getting churches planted.

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The cooperation is so invaluable, invaluable. To a large degree, the

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SBC is evangelicalism. It's so big and it moves this movement forward.

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If it didn't exist, the whole thing would essentially be just a footnote, which makes it such, again, a valuable force that I wanted to be a part of,

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I wanted to partner with, and has been a wonderful and amazing experience. But there's also been some cracks, some cracks that I started to notice to the point where they weren't just little cracks that you had to step over, but pits that you could fall into.

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So he's giving you his credibility here. He's spent two years working with the local

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NAM missionary there, representing, I guess, the representative for the Northwest region.

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Not someone who comes from a Southern Baptist background, though, which I'll be honest, that seems to help more often than not with people critiquing the

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Southern Baptist Convention or shining a spotlight on concerns.

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It tends to be easier for people that don't have that. I don't know what it is. They're not initiated into the 11th commandment.

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They're not, that you shall not criticize another Southern Baptist. They don't have that same chain of command in their mind.

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So this is, it's interesting who this person is and then who

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Kyle is. And then his credibility. It's not like he did a weekend, and I've done that before, a weekend training with NAM.

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He was working for two years toward the dream of planning a church in Washington, and he wanted to do it with NAM.

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And so he's gonna tell us about what's happened over the course of that time and what he's learned.

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But there's also been some cracks, some cracks that I started to notice to the point where they weren't just little cracks that you had to step over, but pits that you could fall into.

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That's a very unfortunate thing. As I began the process, doing all the assessments, applications, we hit the season of coronavirus, and everything shut down, and that put everything on hold and everything on hiatus.

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It threw everything into chaos. It gave me a lot of time to do more research, to investigate things, to ask questions.

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And the kind of kickstart of this journey for me was when the

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North American Missions Board, NAM, changed their platform for all of their assessments, and I had to retake all of them.

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Redo all hours and hours and hours of applications and pre -assessments and questionnaires and personality tests and all these other things.

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Getting people to answer the questionnaires about me is a lot of work, and I had to redo all this.

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But I noticed that they didn't just change where the system was hosted, what website they were using to host it.

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They took that opportunity to overhaul the questionnaires. And I noticed a lot of interesting questions and shifts that had occurred.

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Now we're asking questions about how do you get people to follow your vision?

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How do you motivate people to follow where you're leading?

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The idea of where's the destination you're taking them? How do you get people to see your idea, your will for things?

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All of these kind of questions. And I went, that's not really the role of a pastor.

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I'm an under -shepherd. Jesus is the one that's leading us here.

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It's his vision, it's his church. All I can do is lead them in Christ, take them to Christ and go wherever he's leading.

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So this is not specifically about social justice yet, but what he's talking about, it seems like is the pragmatism that often is manifested in places in NAM.

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I saw that the weekend training I did with NAM, hardly any, actually no scripture was brought up, but one little devotional on one morning that wasn't related to the training.

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The rest of it was all like, what's your personality type? And can you get people to work as a team?

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That kind of thing. And that's why I think what he's talking about here, he's like, this is pragmatic stuff. This isn't, this shouldn't be the barometer you use by which to measure your applicants, whether or not they can,

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I mean, leadership is certainly important, but he's saying that the emphasis is that, is on,

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I guess, creating this unique vision for your community, for their training.

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I've said this before at seminary, there's a sense in which instead of pastors, some seminaries are now training community organizers.

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And I think that's what he's, to some extent, he's kind of, what he's saying is related to that in some way.

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I need to be the first example of submission. But then

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I also noticed questions that were asking, how important is it to do work in the community to open the door for preaching the gospel?

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And I wish at the time I would have screenshotted these questions, because I'm not doing them justice, but they were asking about, and more than just implying, that it's our actions that open the door for the gospel.

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Not as a, it can, because we can certainly do that, they can certainly see our willingness to go serve, but that we must do this, or else the gospel won't be able to be preached in a community.

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And that confused me a little bit. It wasn't big, but it was just a little bit of a hint in there of a focus that I thought was kind of weird.

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And there were very little questions about the gospel itself, or just my personal relationship with God.

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It was very focused on the man, and the physical, and the works.

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And again, that started a journey of, okay, I gotta look into this. What do they actually preach? What do they teach?

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What do they want me to be saying? What do they expect of me as a church planter?

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So me being who I am, I decided to cut through the fat and just go and talk to the head of church planting,

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Dottie Lewis, at the SED Network. And for anyone that doesn't know, the

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SED Network is the church planting arm of the North America Missions Board. They handle the church planting.

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And so I just emailed them with some honest questions. Dottie Lewis is a big name.

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Dottie Lewis, there's a lot more that could be said about Dottie Lewis. Maybe in the next installment, I might talk about him a little bit.

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But I know he's got a connection, I believe, as well to the AND campaign.

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But very, very progressive guy from the clips. I think even Woke Preacher Clips has done,

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I think, a few things on Dottie Lewis. And so anyway, here's, looks like a screenshot of an email.

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Let's see what this is about. I was seeing some of these more social gospel, more it's about our works more than it is about our preaching.

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And so I just emailed them like, look, I want some clarity on this. And the responses

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I got were more concerning than they were alleviating. I was being told that I was preaching a half gospel if I was preaching a gospel of salvation of someone's soul.

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That that's not the whole story. Now I thought at the time, okay, obviously he's talking about,

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I'm only giving part of the picture of the gospel. Because the gospel in, him saying half gospel is, okay, well, we need to talk about the, we need to talk about things like sin, why we need a savior, what

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Jesus did, how we come to him. And we need to talk about future things.

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We need to talk about the glorified state of believers in the end, the restoration of all things in the end, the new heavens, new earth, the full beginning to end gospel, where the story begins, where it ends, and how the gospel makes that transformation.

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It's all about Christ restoring mankind. No. The element of the gospel apparently that's being missed is the economic, social, financial, oh,

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I said, I apologize, I said economic and financial, but the different pillars of society that had been broken, and how we need to restore them.

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And here's some streaming. There's a bunch of emails that keep, screenshots keep getting put up.

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You can go through and read those if you feel it's necessary. So screenshots between Dottie Lewis emails with Kyle Witt.

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Here's Dottie Lewis saying the leaders addressed, let's see, creating systemic change, appointing qualified leaders from the marginalized community and giving them authority to do, this has to be the story of the widows in Acts.

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Yep, sure enough, that's what it is. They use that one all the time. Okay, so he's saying, this is the big picture here.

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The person who's head of Sin Network, Dottie Lewis, is telling, is advocating the idea that you can't have, you shouldn't have a half gospel.

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You have to have a whole gospel and a whole gospel means justice. And this is, this is a false teaching guys.

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This is adding, this is putting social justice works and attaching them to the gospel of grace. It's happening on the highest levels of the

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North American Mission Board. I'm not sure how much more clear you can get it. The documents are all here and I will put a link in the info section if you want more information on this, but there's the emails and there's public documents as well.

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And this is just very concerning. If you're a Southern Baptist, your money is going to this if you're giving the

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Cooperative Program. And I'm glad that Kyle Witt decided to come out and talk about this.

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You need to engage in holistic restoration. And that not is a work of those who have been saved by the gospel, but that is the gospel.

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I tried to give a little bit of pushback for those confused by what he was saying. Was he just emphasizing it differently?

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Was he just being a little bit sloppy with his wording? You know, just talking a little bit too quick and simplifying what he was just saying, instead of saying, you know, this is a commandment given by Jesus.

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This is something that we who have been transformed by the gospel should be doing. James talks about the works of the believer.

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He makes it very clear that how can we who have been transformed by Christ, how can we who've experienced the mercy of Christ not be merciful?

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How can we who have experienced this transformation not reflect it in our lives?

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That the works that a saved believer accomplish should reflect the

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God that saved us. It's important. It's vitally important.

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But no, it was being attached to the gospel itself.

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This is a part of it. It's necessary for the gospel to be true, for the gospel to be what it is.

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The gospel isn't just about the salvation of man's souls. And, you know, the eventual, we will see full restoration.

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We will be raised back to life. These bodies will not just fade away.

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We will not just be bodiless souls for all of existence. This body's gonna be restored.

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There will be a resurrection. Christ is the first fruit of that. He's the proof that we will be raised from the dead.

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But again, that's not what was being taught. What was being taught was that the gospel, this restoration, this work of restoration is something that we, me and you, all of us, do right here, right now in this earth.

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Now, Mr. Lewis was clear enough to say that, well, we don't fully accomplish that here.

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But then would only talk about how we need to be doing it and would talk in terms like we can. Talk very, like we can almost create utopia here and now.

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And for anyone that doubts that, again, he was gracious enough to send me handouts from the

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Send Network, to give me links to their resources, to give me their value and mission booklet.

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But when I specifically asked, what is it that Send believes and how do you want me to be teaching?

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And that was the response. I will make sure that anyone who wants it, you can go look at those documents.

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You can read them for yourselves and you can come to your own conclusions. I just wanna communicate to you where I've been through and what

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I've seen. I think we're gonna stop it there. This is, we're what, 16 minutes in.

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It's a 40 minute video, so you have about 24 more minutes to go here. But we'll do either another episode or another two and we'll talk more about it.

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But this is important stuff. This is a brave guy. He's giving documents that need to be seen by Southern Baptists and he's explaining, he's interpreting them.

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And so I encourage more of this. We'll talk about it more, I'm sure, during the rest of the week.

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And I'll put the link in the info section for it. I appreciate everyone who has stuck with me through this and I hope that it is helping you.

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And it's just, for some of us, I know this is old hat. You've seen this same false teaching over and over and over.

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But we're tracking it down in new places, in different places, in places previously where there has not been a lot of attention called to them.

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And so it takes people like Kyle. One of the things I wanna just drive home is that I know it helps people when

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I will bring stuff up, publicly available information, when I will talk about things. But it's a lot more helpful when someone who's actually walk the walk, talk the talk, is a primary source themselves, walking, talking primary source, can come forward and talk about their experience.

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There's just a level of credibility there that is, and it's convincing for people that are more emotionally convinced anyway, to hear from Kyle rather than from someone like me.

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So if you're sitting there thinking, if you're in your neck of the woods, it's something similar is happening. I encourage you, come forward, trust

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God, and get the truth out there because people are funding things like the

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North American Mission Board, thinking that it's doing, it's just propagating the gospel, it's making disciples. And they don't realize they're attaching social justice, at least on some, at a very high level, social justice is being attached to it.